EIA board OK's split

Circuits Assembly, Sept, 2007 by Mike Buetow

WASHINGTON -- The Electronic Industries Alliance's (eia.org) board of directors has approved a plan that would split the assets of the trade group coalition across five distinct organizations.

Under the plan, EIA will distribute its assets equally among its four current member associations--The Electronic Components, Assemblies & Materials Association (ECA); the Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA); the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (Jedec); the Telecommunications Industry Association--and the Consumer Electronics Association, a former member of EIA.

EIA, whose 1,300 members include many of the top electronics manufacturers, will turn over its standards and technology efforts to the ECA (ec-central.org). Along with Jedec (jedec.org), ECA will write many of the standards used to define component package styles.

The Telecommunications Industry Association (tiaonline.org) has offered to work with EIA's Environmental Issues Council and transfer all environmental staff and EIA Track, a subscription service tracking environmental news and regulation worldwide, to TIA. TIA intends to keep intact all services.

For its part, ECA expects to concentrate its expanded resources in areas such as domestic and international standards, technical conferences and symposia, distribution channel support, and market research. The association will continue its collaboration with its sector counterparts under the EIA banner where necessary in areas such as government access, Internet security, environmental issues and compliance, and international services.

"The realignment gives us an opportunity to provide better integration of programs and membership options addressing every aspect of the electronic component supply chain--from product conception to end-of-life," says Bob Willis, ECA president.

EIA is one of the wealthiest national electronics trade groups, with $33 million in reserves at the end of fiscal 2005, the last year of available records, despite revenues of just under $4 million. By contrast, the American Electronics Association (aeanet.org) took in $16.7 million and had $7.8 million in reserves at the end of fiscal 2004. IPC (ipc.org) took in $15 million in 2005 and had $6.9 million in reserves. SMTA is much smaller, with 2006 revenues of $1.6 million and a balance of $1.2 million.